To reiterate what Tom said, read Miscellaneous Tips #8 and #9 in the expert guide.
Basically, I think that most beginning players have the idea that the key to a high score is simply playing long words whenever possible, the longer the better. This is false. You'll note that in almost every Top 50 game, there is rarely ever a word longer than 5 letters, except for the trips and the starting word.
The actual key to getting high scores is maximizing the points per tile played. This is done by incrementally building words one tile at a time (like you said) and by efficient use of colored square set-ups.
To use your example, if HYPERION was on the board, with a decent tile rack, you might think that playing a long word through the R (or whatever) is better than just putting an A below the H. And it is, in the short term, but in the long term, playing long words everywhere isn't conducive to a high points per tile.
Hope this helped somewhat. :-) |